Sometimes the best press clippings you get are not from your friends, but those who despise you.
A case in point is an amazing piece in Salon last week with the unwieldy and other-worldly headline, “GOP takes spending bill negotiating cues from Alex Jones and WorldNetDaily.”
If only it were true!
It makes you wonder if publications like Salon have editors, if any grown-ups are involved in the enterprise, if truth, facts and substantiation of premises are ever even factored in to what they write and print.
Most of the article bemoans the priorities of Republicans in the House and Senate and then seeks to blame some outside force for setting them.
It’s short on specifics, as well as facts, and devoid of connections between WND and Republican priorities.
The first beef cited by the writer, Alex Pareene, is cuts in spending that force the TSA to hire more security contractors. Heck, if it were up to me, I’d abolish the TSA and the Department of Homeland Security. But the author leaves it up to the imagination of readers to find the connection between WND and the Republicans’ $1.1 trillion spending plan for the rest of 2014.
What else bugs Salon about the budget?
- a prohibition on the IRS making “inappropriate videos”;
- a prohibition on government seizing incandescent light bulbs;
- a prohibition against a future “Fast and Furious” debacle;
- a requirement on DHS to provide detailed reports on its purchase and use of ammunition;
Now, just between you and me, don’t these seem like perfectly reasonable reforms? I suspect they would have 99 percent support from the American people. So who could argue with them?
I’ll tell you who – the wingnuts at Salon.
But Salon says Alex Jones and I deserve credit. All we did was expose abuses that led to this consensus. Isn’t that what journalism is supposed to do? Isn’t the press supposed to be a watchdog on government fraud, waste, abuse and corruption?
Apparently not in the parallel universe in which Salon lives.
This is all bad stuff. Government should be empowered to do whatever it wants in spite of the rule of law and the will of the people, as Salon sees it.
The article concludes: “The spending bill essentially decides what the federal government will choose to do this year. And in order for it to pass, it had to address conspiracy theories from Alex Jones and WorldNetDaily. Hell of a way to run a country.”
“Conspiracy theories?”
Wait a minute! Is it a conspiracy theory that the IRS is out of control and unaccountable under the law? Did it not target political enemies of Barack Obama’s administration? Wasn’t that an admission by Obama, who blamed underlings and accepted three resignations? Is Salon apologizing and excusing abuses like this at the IRS?
Wait a minute! Didn’t the Democrat-controlled Congress pass a law banning the sale of one of the greatest inventions in history – the incandescent light bulb? Wasn’t the Obama administration seizing any that were still on sale beginning this month? Is Salon in favor of choice when it comes to killing unborn children but against it when it comes to light bulbs?
Wait a minute! Didn’t American law enforcement personnel die as a result of Washington’s bizarre plan to sell firearms to the Mexican drug lords in “Fast and Furious”? Was this just the imagination of WND and Alex Jones and Fox News, as Salon suggests? Isn’t it a good thing to make sure we don’t do something like this, again?
Wait a minute! Is it a bad idea to require DHS, or any other government agency, to be transparent about what it is doing – especially when it involves stockpiling guns and ammunition? Again, apparently not in the worldview of Salon.
I only wish I deserved credit for such actions. Yet, I feel I haven’t been nearly effective enough at influencing government, be it the Republican Party or the Democrats.
Based on the evidence presented by Salon, who’s the bigger wingnut – me or the government apologists at Salon?
Media wishing to interview Joseph Farah, please contact [email protected].
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